Winter Olympics

Believe it or not, the end of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics is in sight. The majority of medals have already been awarded, and the closing ceremony is scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

The good news for serious Olympics fans is that the next iteration is only a year-and-a-half away.

The next Winter Olympics, which will be held primarily in the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, will kick off in early February of 2026 and will feature 116 medal events in 16 sports.

While it's a far cry from the 329 medal events held in Paris this summer, the Milano Cortina Games will bring more than two full weeks of sporting action.

2026 Winter Olympics

When: February 6-22, 2026

Opening Ceremony: February 6, 2026

Where: Italy

Host Cities: Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo

Events: 116 Medal Events

The 2026 Olympics will also feature a few firsts, including the first time multiple cities have officially hosted the Games.

Italy was named as the host country—events will also take place at clusters in Valtellina, Val di Fiemme and Verona—after Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were picked over a joint bid from Swedish cities Stockholm and Åre.

For the first time since the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, the opening and closing ceremonies will be held at different venues. The opening ceremony is set to take place at San Siro Stadium in Milan, while the closing ceremony is scheduled for Verona Arena in Verona.

In a true first, the Olympics logo, known as "Futura" was selected via an open vote:

The logo incorporates the number "26" and is stylized with a single white line that reflects "Milano Cortina 2026's ambition to place sustainability and legacy at its core," according to Olympics.com.

The official mascots for the 2025 Olympics are stoats siblings Tina and Milo, who are named after the two host cities. Tina will serve as the mascot of the 2026 Winter Olympics, while Milo will be the mascot of the 2026 Winter Paralympics.

Italy, which has hosted three previous Olympics, should serve as a beautiful backdrop to a number of Olympic events, both old and new.

"I think it's going to be really exciting," U.S. alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin told NBC. "It's a really amazing venue, for alpine especially. ...Cortina's a regular stop on the World Cup Tour, so it's a place that alpine athletes are familiar with."

In addition to traditional sports like alpine skiing, figure skating and hockey, the 2026 Games will feature a few new events. Skeleton will feature a mixed-team event for the first time, while ski mountaineering, also called skimo, will make its Olympic debut.

Skimo is a race in which participants must traverse uphill and over rugged terrain with specialized equipment and then ski downhill.

Other new events include the implementation of men's and women's doubles luge, men's and women's dual moguls and women's large-hill individual ski jumping.

While a full Olympic schedule won't be set until closer to the games, a few events will likely unfold prior to the opening ceremony on February 6—the Paris Olympics had two days of competition before the official opening day.

The 2026 Winter Paralympic Games will be a couple of weeks after the closing ceremony and will take place between March 6 and March 16.

Global broadcast options will vary from country to country, but NBC is to set to hold the broadcast rights in the United States, while Warner Bros. Discovery is set to hold the European broadcast rights.

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are set to officially kick off with Friday's opening ceremony. While fans are gearing up for exciting events like football (soccer), basketball, water polo and gymnastics, it's never too early to take a look ahead at the next iteration of the Olympics, the 2026 Winder Games.

The 2026 Olympics will be held primarily in the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo. This will mark the fourth time the Olympics have been held in Italy but the first Olympics to feature multiple official host cities.

Italy previously hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo and the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.

While the 2026 Olympics are still nearly two years away, plenty of details are already known.

2026 Winter Olympics

When: February 6-22, 2026

Where: Italy

Host Cities: Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo

Events: 116 Medal Events in 8 Disciplines

Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were named the host cities in 2019 after winning a vote against another joint bid from Swedish cities Stockholm and Åre. While Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo will serve as the host cities, events will also take place at clusters in Valtellina, Val di Fiemme and Verona.

The 2026 Games will bring another first. The logo, known as "Futura" was selected via an open vote:

The number "26" is clearly visible in the logo and, according to Olympics.com, it is stylized with a single white line that reflects "Milano Cortina 2026's ambition to place sustainability and legacy at its core."

While the 2026 Olympics will feature traditional events like figure skating, ice hockey, speed skating and alpine skiing, eight new events and one new sport will be on display. Ski mountaineering, also called skimo. is a race in which participants must traverse uphill with specialized equipment and then ski downhill.

"Though new to the Olympic Games program, ski mountaineering is a dynamic, fast-growing sport that also boasts more than a century of tradition," United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee chief of sport Rocky Harris said, per Matt Boxler of New England Ski Journal.

While sliding events like bobsled, luge and skeleton are expected to be held in Italy, there's achance that they'll be held elsewhere. After concerns about the ability to reconstruct an abandoned track, a bid was delivered to build a new track just outside of Cortina. While there's no guarantee the new track will be completed on time, Milan-Cortina CEO Andrea Varnier remains optimistic.

"Basically, you have almost the entire shape of the [track] built," Vernier said on July 22, per Les Carpenter of the Washington Post. "...We are confident. Nonetheless, we are still evaluating alternative plans for tracks that are not in Italy."

If sliding-track events are held outside of Italy, it would make the 2026 Games the first Winter Olympics to hold events outside of the host country.

For the first time since the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, the opening and closing ceremonies will be held at different venues. The opening ceremony is scheduled to be held at San Siro Stadium in Milan, while the closing ceremony is set to take place at Verona Arena in Verona.

While complete scheduling and broadcast information likely won't be known until closer to the opening date, Warner Bros. Discovery is set to hold the European broadcast rights, while NBC will hold the broadcast rights in the United States.

For the first time since 2002, the Winter Olympics are set to return to the United States.

Members of the International Olympic Committee voted on Wednesday for the 2034 Winter Games to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah, the same city that hosted the Games in 2002. This will be the fifth time a U.S. city has hosted the Winter Games, which will come after the French Alps hosts in 2030.

"We are ready. Everything is in place," Fraser Bullock, the leader of Salt Lake City's bid committee, said in a presentation at the IOC session Wednesday, per Tom Schad of USA Today. "But beyond our physical assets, you can count on our people. As great as our venues are, our people are even better."

The campus at the University of Utah will act as the Olympic Village for the Winter Games, and it was announced that Salt Lake City has proposed to be the first city to offer an Athlete Family Village to host the relatives of the competitors. Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn explained the initiative at Wednesday's IOC session:

Schad noted that Wednesday's vote was more of a formality after Salt Lake City was already determined as the "best option" for 2034. However, a bit of controversy arose when some IOC members criticized the United States "for its recent political actions around the World Anti-Doping Agency and the controversial doping case involving 23 Chinese swimmers." Still, the vote passed by an overwhelming margin of 83-6.

"I'm sorry for you, and for us, that this issue arose now," IOC president Thomas Bach told Salt Lake's bid committee.

The venues for some of the marquee events at the Winter Games will include figure skating being held at the Delta Center, the home of the Utah Jazz. Skiing events will take place at Snowbasin Resort, and snowboarding events will be held in Park City, Utah.

Dalilah Sappenfield, the U.S. Olympic pairs figure skating coach, received a lifetime ban from the U.S. Center for SafeSport on Wednesday for violations that include emotional and physical misconduct, per Christine Brennan of USA Today.

In October 2021, Brennan published a detailed report on abuse allegations against Sappenfield from 2016 U.S. pairs champion Tarah Kayne.

As part of the allegations she reported to a SafeSport investigator, Kayne detailed an instance "in which the coach's constant verbal abuse, filled with sexual comments, led her to cut her left wrist with a razor blade in the summer of 2019 in her dorm room at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado."

"She was constantly talking about sex, about who I was dating, about my sex life," Kayne said at the time. "It was completely inappropriate, but that's what Dalilah does. She uses gossip from other skaters in the rink against you. She knew I was struggling with my mental health, but instead of helping me, she chose to make fun of me. She even went to other skaters and told them about it, calling me names and asking the guys why anyone would want to date me."

Kayne was one of several skaters to file complaints against Sappenfield with SafeSport nearly three years ago. Sappenfield was suspended pending further investigation and barred from "having any contact with a dozen figure skaters and from coaching other athletes without another adult present to supervise."

Sappenfield had worked as a coach since 1993 and was the recipient of the 2008 Professional Skaters Association/U.S. Figure Skating Coach of the Year award. She coached three-time national champions Alexa and Chris Knierim to a qualifying spot in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

Olympic alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin announced her engagement to fellow skier and longtime boyfriend Aleksander Kilde on Friday.

The couple announced their engagement in a joint Instagram post that contained a series of images, including Shiffrin wearing her engagement ring.

Shiffrin and Kilde have been together for just over three years after first meeting one another at a ski camp. Shiffrin is arguably the greatest ski race competitor of all-time, winning two Olympic gold medals and owning the most World Cup wins of any male or female in the sport.

She had been sidelined for several weeks due to a knee injury that she sustained in a downhill crash in Cortina, Italy.

Kilde is also an Olympic medalist, taking home one bronze and one silver medal in 2022. However, he's currently recovering from a crash that required emergency surgery. He tore ligaments, dislocated his shoulder, and also suffered a gash in his calf.

While the two have dealt with injuries throughout their respective 2024 campaigns, their relationship off the slopes seems to be as strong as ever.

NHL players are officially set to return to the Winter Olympics.

The NHL, NHL Players' Association and International Ice Hockey Federation struck an agreement on Friday allowing players to compete in the 2026 and 2030 Winter Games.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a statement:

The international composition of National Hockey League rosters is unparalleled, and NHL Players take great pride in representing their countries. We are pleased that today, after intense collaborative efforts with the NHL Players' Association and the International Ice Hockey Federation, we can formally announce that NHL Players will participate in both the 2026 and 2030 Olympic hockey tournaments."   

The 2026 Winter Games, which will be held in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, will mark the first time the NHL has sent players to the Olympics since the 2014 Games in Sochi when Canada won the gold medal.

The host for the 2030 Olympics hasn't yet been named, though France is considered the frontrunner with a formal announcement expected in July.

The NHL enjoyed a run of participating in five straight Olympics from 1998 to 2014. Players were interested in participating in the 2018 PyeongChang Games, but no deal was reached amid concerns over marketing, insurance, travel costs and player injuries.

Players were initially set to compete in the 2022 Beijing Games, but the COVID-19 pandemic ruined those plans.

Without the NHL's participation in the 2018 and 2022 Olympics, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada assembled rosters that included college players, minor leaguers and players competing for international clubs.

The latest agreement paves the way for some of the league's biggest stars to suit up on the biggest stage, including the likes of Canadian Connor McDavid and American Auston Matthews.

"We know that hockey fans worldwide have long been anticipating the next best-on-best international competition, and now they can finally see some of their favorite players represent their countries and line up together," said NHLPA executive director Marty Walsh.

The NHL will not cover costs to send players to the 2026 Olympics. That responsibility falls on the IIHF, the national federations and Olympic committees of each participating country.

Nine countries have already qualified for the 2026 Games due to their place in the IIHF World Rankings—United States, Canada, Finland, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Czechia and Italy, the host country.

Three more spots are up for grabs, and those will be determined through four rounds of qualification that begin on Feb. 8.

Chloe Kim made history during her seventh X Games SuperPipe gold medal win Friday night.

During her victory lap, Kim completed three and a half rotations and landed a 1260 for the first time in the history of the women's halfpipe competition.

Kim first posted herself landing a 1260 during practice on her Instagram in May 2018.

"After multiple penguin slides and ice burns all over my body it was worth it!!" Kim wrote in the caption.

Kim previously attempted the 1260 at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing but fell on the landing.

"I really wanted to do that trick for a long time," Kim said about the 1260 on the NBC Sports broadcast. "I wish it was a little cleaner, but I'm really stoked that I was able to put it down."

Next up could be the 1440. Kim became the first woman to land one in training during a camp in Switzerland this winter, according to NBC Sports.

With the new year quickly approaching, Mikaela Shiffrin is closing out 2023 on a high.

The 28-year-old edged out Federica Brignone and Sara Hector to win Thursday's women's World Cup giant slalom in Lienz, Austria. It's her 92nd career World Cup victory, extending the record she set in March.

Shiffrin was well ahead of the field after the first run with a time of 1:01.82, and her sizable lead proved invaluable since her second run (1:04.16) was nearly slow enough to knock her down the podium.

"The second run was great skiing with a little bit more space," she said after the event.

"Federica, a few more gates and she would have probably taken it. So, that's the next thing to learn for the coming races: you have to push in the second run."

Shiffrin added she was "a little back and forth in my thoughts" in terms of her mindset going into the second run. She wanted to maintain her first-place position but avoid getting too aggressive and making a critical error.

Shiffrin now has four World Cup wins for the 2023-24 season, and this was her first in the giant slalom. Her 800 points put her atop the overall World Cup standings, and she improved to third in the giant slalom rankings.

The slalom portion is scheduled for Friday in Lienz, so the American can potentially add to her medal haul before departing Austria. She has twice prevailed on the Schlossberg in the slalom in 2017 and 2019.

Salt Lake City, Utah, which hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, is in line to host the Games once again in 2034.

The International Olympic Committee announced that it has invited the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to "targeted dialogues" regarding Salt Lake City hosting the 2034 Winter Games.

In addition, the IOC has invited the French National Olympic Committee (CNOSF) into targeted dialogues for the 2030 Games to take place in the French Alps.

Both the French Alps and Salt Lake City have been named as "preferred hosts" for the Games.

Per The Athletic, the hosts for both the 2030 and 2034 Winter Olympics and Paralympics are expected to be made official in July.

Karl Stoss, who served as the chairperson of the IOC's future host commission, explained what drew the committee to the French Alps and Salt Lake City.

"What really stood out about the French Alps and Salt Lake City-Utah projects was their vision for the athlete experience, their alignment with regional and national socio-economic development plans, and their very strong support from the public and from all levels of government," Stoss said at a news conference (h/t The Athletic).

"The commission felt strongly that the other interested parties would benefit from more time to optimize the athlete experience of their future Games, and to continue to build on their burgeoning foundations of public and political support."

The next Winter Olympics and Paralympics will take place in 2026 in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Paris is the home of the next Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2024, followed by Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in 2032.

Mikaela Shiffrin notched her 89th World Cup victory Sunday in Finland to pad her all-time record.

The 28-year-old had a total time of 1:51.68, putting her 0.18 seconds ahead of Leona Popović.

Shiffrin benefited from an error by Petra Vlhová on her second run. Vlhová paced the field on her first run with a time of 55.92 seconds, picking up where she left of Saturday in a winning effort. During her next go-round, however, she straddled a gate on her way down to remove her from the running.

"Petra really did a masterclass in slalom skiing this weekend. And she was by far ahead," Shiffrin said. "In my mind, she earned this victory and I'm quite lucky to have it."

She added her win was "a little bittersweet."

In addition to now having the most golds at Levi, OlympicTalk noted Shiffrin is the first skier to earn a World Cup win in 12 consecutive seasons. She also claimed sole possession for the most podium finishes (139), putting her 16 behind Ingemar Stenmark.